Video: Inserting a chart

Sometimes data is easier to understand, to compare data or spot trends, for example, when that data is in a graphical form, also known as a chart. And here in PowerPoint 2011, you have the same charting engine available to you in Microsoft Excel. It's shared. So you have the full power to create some very impressive charts. We are going to do that right now with our TwoTreesTale presentation, and we are going to do it between slides 13 and 14. So you can click slide 13 or click between 13 and 14; whatever you prefer.

In PowerPoint for Mac 2011 Essential Training, author David Rivers demonstrates how to create effective slideshows and dynamic presentations using the tools in Microsoft PowerPoint 2011. The course provides in-depth instructions for changing the look of presentations: using built-in and custom themes, formatting text, inserting tables and charts, adding pictures and SmartArt drawings, and adding animation. It also shows how to proof presentations and ready them for viewing, and gives details on the different ways to share presentations. Exercise files are included with the course.

Inserting a chart

Sometimes data is easier to understand, to compare data or spot trends, forexample, when that data is in a graphical form, also known as a chart.And here in PowerPoint 2011, you have the same charting engine available toyou in Microsoft Excel. It's shared.So you have the full power to create some very impressive charts.We are going to do that right now with our TwoTreesTale presentation, and we aregoing to do it between slides 13 and 14.So you can click slide 13 or click between 13 and 14; whatever you prefer.

Click New Slide and the new default slide format, which is Title, and contentis inserted for you.Let's start with the title.We'll just click up there, and let's say we want to compare a few flavors, thesales of those flavors, who's buying what.So we'll call this Favorite Flavors.And we are going to highlight the top three.All right, so down below now where it says Click to add text, we'll also havethose content icons, and one of them is the Insert Chart icon.All this is going to do, when we click it, is move us to the Charts tab on the Ribbon.

So we could just click the Charts tab, or we could have gone up to Insert andselected Chart from here; same thing happens.We now see the different chart options on the Ribbon, and there are differentchart types to choose from:Scatter, Area, Bar, and Column, we've also got Line and Pie.Well, if we are going to compare three different flavors, probably a pie chart is best.So we'll click the pie chart. Notice all of these have little arrows,representing these pulldowns, and now if you wanted to, you could select a format.There are 2-D formats to choose from: your Standard, Exploded, and so on.

We've also got a couple of 3-D options.I like the 3-D Pie, so let's go with that one, 3-D Pie unexploded, and itactually takes us into Excel.Remember what I said:we are sharing the charting engine from Excel here, so this is where wemanipulate the data. And we have some sample data available to us here as well.What just happened was a pie chart was created on the slide using the sampledata, and we are about to change it.If you want to take a peek, just move back to PowerPoint for a second, andyou'll notice there it is.

It's called Sales. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Quarter, and there is thedefault formatting.We'll go back to Excel to change that data.Let's say we are only going to compare three flavors.We'll start where it says, 1st Quarter by clicking there, and type in one ofthose flavors. How about basil?Press Return, and we'll type in another one, maybe mandarin, and maybe theother third most popular one is garlic, which means, of course when we pressReturn, we don't need the 4th Quarter sample data, so we'll just click on therow header here, 5.

That selects the entire row. And to delete this actually Ctrl+Click orRight-Click and select Delete. Gone.Now instead of Sales, let's type in Favorites, and the actual percentages, now wecan start entering those. Let's type in 45 for Basil.We'll type in 15 for Mandarin and 40 for Garlic. There we go.As we are entering that data, it's updating the chart in PowerPoint. And in factwe can close this spreadsheet now by clicking the Close button.

We are not prompted to save it.That's because it's actually saved here in our chart in PowerPoint.So there is the new legend, with our three favorites.You can see the different pie pieces, representing the percentages, and the otherthing that happens now,some more options are available to us on the Ribbon.We have some formatting options; for example, if we want to choose a differentlayout, wouldn't it be nice if we could see those percentages as labels right onthe different pieces of pie?Well, when you move here to this section by clicking and click the dropdown forChart Quick Layouts, you will see some different options. You can hover over them tosee what they're called: Layout 1, 2, 3, and 4.

The one we like, I think, probably is this one here with the percentages, or even thefirst one, which looks to have a label and a percentage and no legend. You cansee that from the thumbnails.Let's try that first one.So sure enough, there is no legend; instead, we see the labels, or flavors, right onthe pieces of pie and the percentages.If you want to try the other one with the legend and just the percentages, giveit a click, and that looks a little different.So whatever you prefer, go ahead and select it.Other formatting you can do from the Ribbon involve the chart style. And again,we can move to the bottom-center to click the dropdown, and see a whole bunch ofdifferent preset options that we can choose from.

For example, let's go for this one here in the second row, second column, whichgives us some different colors, makes it easier to spot, and the separators inbetween those colors are a little more highlighted as well.So that's kind of cool looking.That's just some of the formatting you can do. If you need to edit the data -maybe we have got this mixed up a little bit - notice the Edit button representsan Excel spreadsheet.So we open the data in Excel by clicking it.We are back to the spreadsheet. And maybe it was 46 and 39 that we reallywanted, so 46 and 39 for Garlic. There we go.

We close this up - no need to save it - and there is those changes updatedautomatically for us.Just click off the slide to see the end result with our selectedformatting, very nice.So this works with all different kinds of charts.Remember, when you've got lots of data sitting on a slide, sometimes it can lullyour audience to sleep.It's much easier to spot the comparisons, or the trends, and so on, if it's ina graphical format.So remember, you can use the same charting capabilities here in PowerPoint thatyou have in Microsoft Excel.

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